It's no secret that corporate big-box stores have been threatening small mom-and-pop stores for years. But the little ones aren't all gone.

SEAN DUFRENE / Union-Tribune

Phil and Carol Phillips own Farenheit 451, an independent used bookstore in Carlsbad. The couple, whose Julian home was destoyed in the wildfires three years ago, owned The Old Julian Book House but recently sold it and moved to the coast.

SEAN DUFRENE / Union-Tribune

Tom Touzinsky (left) of Temecula, is helped by Phil and Carol Phillips at Farenheit 451 in Carlsbad.

Some, like the Carlsbad-based Farenheit 451 bookstore, have just opened this year. (And its nameis misspelled on purpose.)

At a time when Borders, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com seem to dominate book sales, Phil and Carol Phillips can think of a lot of good reasons to own a bookstore. For starters, they enjoy it.

“I remember when I was a boy hiding under the covers with my flashlight, reading comic books,” said Phil Phillips. “And I would stay up all night reading and, of course, the next day I couldn't go to school because I was so tired I had a stomachache and I'd have to make up some other story.”

Carol Philips said, “I was just this nerdy English major who liked to work at the library because it was cool. And in between shelving, I liked to find stuff to read and sit there and read for 45 minutes.”

In 1992, Phil Phillips opened his first bookstore in Julian. He later moved to Julian's main street, where he owned and operated The Old Julian Book House for more than a decade.

While there, he married Carol and brought her into the business.

Life was good, until the wildfires of 2003 burned down their home and the 60,000 books they stored in it.

There was no insurance for the books and they estimated the loss at about $500,000.

SEAN DUFRENE/ Union-Tribune

The Old Julian Book House survived, but the couple decided it was time to relocate to the coast. They sold the store, moved to Carlsbad and in February opened a new store, fittingly named Farenheit 451 after the famous Ray Bradbury science fiction novel.

In the story, 451 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which books burn.

“We named the store that in honor of all the books that we lost in the fire. Our books and our friends,” said Carol Phillips.

For originality purposes, the Farenheit store name is purposely misspelled.

Primarily a used bookstore, Farenheit 451 sells everything from Stephen King paperbacks to books that are 300 years old. Still, most of the books have never been read, Phil Phillips said.

The store has about as much floor space as the inside of a school bus. A typical Borders or Barnes & Noble is about the size of a supermarket.

Can Farenheit, or for that matter any independent bookstore, compete?

“To paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of our death are slightly premature,” said Oren Teicher, chief operating officer of The American Booksellers Association, whose members include about 1,800 independent book companies nationwide.

“Independent stores survive because customers and book lovers like shopping there because of the knowledge and passion of the owners.”

Independents still account for about 11 percent of total books sold each year. Teicher said.

But Teicher admitted that the book market is fiercely competitive.

“Fifty-five percent of all books aren't even sold in any bookstore,” he said. The majority of books are sold in a variety of stores from Costco and supermarkets to computer stores. Twelve percent are sold on the Internet, where Amazon.com dominates the market.

“But in this industry, book buyers have different preferences at different times.

Sometimes they want a small bookstore and sometimes they want to order a book on the Internet,” he said, adding that buyers want both options, so independents are still viable.

“We carry a lot of the same stuff (large retailers) carry, but we don't carry new books,” Carol Phillips said. “So if you want the most current recent book, we don't necessarily have it. But we'll have stuff that they can't get, because it's out of print.”

Referring to the fire that burned down their home, Phil Phillips said the couple are looking forward, not back.

“The story here isn't about the past,” he said. “It's about the fact that we're back and moving on.”